


Play For Keeps

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 16:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12085278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: AU from the end of season one. People everywhere are disappearing, and Finn learns how to want for less and to count on something different.(Originally written & posted Oct. 2010)





	Play For Keeps

_Red strings of prayer are filling up the sky_  
We stayed awake to watch the day go by  
They don't know why you will go on  
They don't know why you will go on alone  
\-- Asobi Seksu, "Stay Awake"  


 

 

It crept up on the world all slow and quiet, this epidemic: no one paid much attention to the first signs.

Finn heard about the first public case over breakfast. It was late summer, August, when the sunlight burned golden on a lower heat and the air was turning crisp with the promise of autumn. Sunday family breakfast at a local pancake house, emphasis on _family_. This blossoming _thing_ between Burt and Carole—it was still new and raw then, like a fresh wound, and it was discomfiting for all involved. After the initial attempts at light conversation (failures, all), they busied themselves with cutting their pancakes into microscopic pieces and staring into their coffee cups.

Kurt had his elbows propped up on the marbled diner table, expensive shirt sleeves carefully rolled up. He was looking out the window, the very picture of listlessness. Finn scratched at his shoulder-blades; the sweater he was made to wear itched.

Burt was the one to break the silence. He said, "so how about that news today, huh?"

"What news?" said Carole.

"A little girl just disappeared," Burt said. "In Indiana yesterday. Newspaper said she just vanished in a playground."

The contents of the news article were as follows: Sara Arellano, eight years old, some nowhere town in Indiana; she was waiting for her turn on the swings. It was an instantaneous thing, according to her mother (who was facing penalties for parental negligence). Her mother had blinked once, and the girl had simply disappeared into thin air, with only her clothes remaining. That was her story, anyway.

Kurt said, "sounds absolutely inane. Were there any other eyewitnesses?"

"Two other kids said they saw her disappear, too," Burt said. "But they're six or seven years old so the police don't consider them reliable witnesses."

"Ridiculous," Carole scoffed. "They're children, of course they're not reliable witnesses. It's probably a case of kidnapping, you know, child molestation. Sexual predators everywhere nowadays, and the streets are so unsafe. Or maybe she just ran away? That's the most reasonable explanation. Really terrible business."

And that was that.

A few days later Finn was pouring milk into his cereal (Lucky Charms; he liked it for the marshmallows) when the photograph on the side of the milk carton caught his eye. The letters underneath spelled out the child's name in Times New Roman, heavy and serifed.

Finn absentmindedly examined the picture for a moment. The girl's features were no more enthralling than the font her name was printed in: large eyes, thin mouth, a sullen expression framed by dark curls. It was the quality of the photograph that was unsettling, not the face. The girl had only been missing for a week at this point, but the image looked aged, ghostly, as though she'd been six feet under for years and years.

She probably _was_ dead at this point, 'cuz eight year old girls probably can't survive long out there with all those burglars and kidnappers and stuff, Finn thought. Suddenly he was stricken with a vague and nebulous sadness. You disappear, you end up on a milk carton, you die, not necessarily in that order. Strange how life and death are dictated by such prosaic things, but he didn't know how to translate that emotion into thought; he only knew the feeling of half-hearted melancholia, like waking up to the sound of rain on the roof.

But the feeling dissolved quickly enough, and soon Finn placed the girl out of mind. He was seventeen and bursting with health and energy and, like most other seventeen-year-olds, he felt like he might live forever. This sort of predicament only happened to other people, so he believed.

That night he dreamed about a playground, a child's utopia of candy-colored metal and plastic. Noon, and the waves of heat rising almost visibly from the dry and crumbling earth, the sky a perfect supersaturated blue. A little girl delineated in sharp relief by nearly blinding light, with the sun making her dark hair glow golden.

One moment she was there, the next there was simply a pink polka-dotted dress hitting the sand. And a pair of white socks. The scene was completely wiped clean of a body. The discontinuity of the consecutive images jarred Finn out of sleep, and he woke up with his heartbeat going fast, too fast.

At the time, he called it a nightmare.

Later, sprawled across Kurt's lap, Finn will recount this dream. It will be raining, and Kurt will be gazing out the window, by all appearances barely listening. Half a day later he will say: prophetic dreams are no use if they only come to you after the fact.

 

 

*

 

 

That was less than a year ago.

It was when an ambassador from Russia vanished whilst shaking the President's hand, three months ago on television screens around the globe, that the world finally sat up and took notice. Most people were initially certain it was a hoax, of course. Simply a more sophisticated take on those photographs of UFOs, which always boiled down to bits of string and some clever manipulation.

But then more people disappeared.

Panic.

They are still disappearing, the air swallowing people whole, leaving behind nothing but peripherals. The world is in the full throes of absolute, unleashed hysteria. Delirium. No cause or solution, and the numbers are soaring skyward, and Finn is trying so hard not to be terrified it drains him down to dry bone.

It's all talk talk talk of the apocalypse these days. He can't escape it. Wakes up in the morning, listens to the radio in the car, on which political pundits speculate about governments gone delirious with power, hinting at the possibilities of hidden agendas. Lining the hallway bulletin board at McKinley High are posters and pamphlets, advertising lectures on the possibilities of a medical epidemic, a new pathogen, a global catastrophe. He refuses to attend any, thinks ignorance would be bliss.

When he arrives home, Burt and Carole have the television turned on as they always do these days. There is special coverage tonight on the sudden burst of new followers among the paranormal. Psychics have lines forming in front of their doors, stretching out infinitely; UFO sightings are being reported on a daily basis; church attendance around the globe is reaching record highs. The video footage displays people yelling about God, about ghosts, about the Apocalypse and the anti-Christ, with fearful hordes fast crowding in on them, like flies to honey. They ask for absolution. They pray for a reprieve, as God is gracious, forever and ever amen.

On NBC Live, a child disappears from—not into—the crowd. It is like he was never there.

Then the program abruptly cuts into the news break, government-issued, where the newest estimated body count trawls across the screen in numbers as crimson as a warning.

"Higher than last night," Kurt remarks from the other side of the couch, cup of lukewarm tea in his hands. He says it in the same way he comments on rainy weather, accompanies it with a sigh containing no specific sorrow. But Kurt's hands are shaking a little and he spills some tea on a pillow, staining the fabric the color of dead leaves. Finn pretends he hasn't noticed.

"It's gonna be March tomorrow," Finn says, without really knowing why. A non-sequitur. He fancies the idea of it though, a new month. Pins all his hopes to it like a butterfly to a corkboard, as though maybe a new page of the calendar could return everyone the atmosphere consumed and restore equilibrium to the universe. Things will resolve themselves, that is how the world goes: there is no reason to be afraid.

 

 

*

 

 

But it only becomes worse in March.

A few days into the new month the body count suddenly spikes. An exponential increase. The invisible force (or God, or gods, or science, debatable) rolls on with increasing momentum, with the departures piling up fast and heavy, summer showers easing into torrents. Burt's brow is permanently furrowed these days, even if he says _don't worry, don't worry_ like a mantra. He keeps saying this, unprovoked.

Finn overhears him talking urgently with Carole one night, when Finn is halfway down the stairs to the basement. "We could go to Canada," Burt murmurs, "or I don't know, England or somewhere, anywhere—"

"It won't make a difference," Carole returns, voice low. "You know it won't. People, they—it's happening everywhere, you know, every country. We can't hide—"

There is no sanctuary, is what she does not say.

Finn makes his way down the stairs very, very quietly. When he enters the room he realizes that he needn't have bothered; Kurt's awake, with the lights on and a book splayed open in his hands. _Conversational Portuguese in Two Months_ ; Kurt's been reading it for three.

Kurt looks up, twists his mouth into some semblance of a smile. "Hello," he says.

"Hey," Finn returns, exhausted. He flops onto his bed, burrows himself underneath the covers. For a lapse of time there's only the twig-snap sound of pages turning and the chirp of crickets outside and the irregular thump of his own heart, ricocheting inside his ribcage.

"Are you afraid?" Kurt says suddenly. He reaches over and turns off the light, pooling them in darkness.

"Everyone we know's still around and stuff," Finn hedges; Kurt didn't really ask it like a question anyway, it doesn't necessitate an actual answer. "And only like, four people in Lima so far. I don't know, dude. We might get lucky."

"Lucky," Kurt muses aloud. Too dark to really see, but Finn can hear the clean-cut rustle of cotton sheets, Kurt turning over to face his side of the room. There's just the perfect amount of wonder in Kurt's voice when he says, "you really do believe that, do you?"

Finn doesn't deign to answer. He is freshly eighteen and not the brightest crayon in the box, but to think that this mysterious force will be suddenly blindsided by kindness is, yeah, a stretch. Kurt knows this too, he is sure. But Kurt can play innocence rather well when he puts his mind to it.

All quiet now; tonight looks to be another of those near-sleepless ones. He counts to at least sixty before Kurt's breathing segues into sinusoidal easy rhythm, signaling unconsciousness, and continues counting. The moonlight is too bright, too exposing. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Finn has never given much thought to the state of his soul. The afterlife and divine grace had never been of immediate concern to him (and therefore no concern at all; that was how he operated). But he figures that when things are really seriously going to total shit, you gotta try all your options, right?

Eyes closed and breathing steady, he wills his pulse to decelerate. Silently he mouths a plea to the universe at large, anything that might be listening. An open letter of a prayer:

_Please_

_just_

_stop_

 

As it happens, the universe couldn't care less about what Finn wants.

 

 

*

 

 

The world may be deconstructing itself daily, but the apocalypse has yet to hit McKinley High. The student body count remains fixed. It makes it easier for Finn to continue living his regular life, with all of his friends still whole, every atom in place.

Until Monday afternoon, when Tina disappears right during Glee Club rehearsal. 

There is no blood. He knows there shouldn't be. This particular flavor of apocalypse brings no actual bloodshed; he's been witnessing it secondhand constantly. The live recordings of these disappearances are looped endlessly on television, on every channel, often. Too often. So frequently that he can't close his eyes without seeing the faint outlines of people who once were, seared into the flesh of his eyelids. Still, he half-expected a spectacle, an explosion or a burst of flames, the rusted-pennies scent of spilled blood to fill the air. The body self-dissecting particle by particle. Something substantial, anyway, that could bridge the disconnect between the disappearance and the person.

Instead it's just the tiniest lapse in spacetime. Just a rip in the fabric. Like so. One moment: Tina's thumbing through sheet music in her seat, biting her bottom lip thoughtfully. An epsilon of time passes: she is gone. There is no sound.

Her clothes don't disappear with her. For the briefest of moments there's a beanie, pair of socks, little black dress, suspended in midair like a Surrealist painting. Then gravity draws them to the floor in a haphazard heap.

The room falls dead quiet.

This absence of sound is so charged, crackling sharp with static, that it makes Finn dizzy in all its incalculable weight. It is their first casualty, and everyone in glee club is eying the spot Tina occupied seconds ago. No one moves. They are paralyzed with the significance of this, their first loss. It grounds them.

Rachel is the first to speak. "Oh god," she murmurs, quietly for once, and the silence breaks. Shatters. They cry up a storm, they are fully children again. Most of them cry, anyway, these great wracking sobs that shake their entire foundations. Will is shaking and his eyes are borderline crazy. Nothing in his teaching manual has prepared him for this.

Puck says something like "shouldn't we call an ambulance or the police or—" and doesn't finish his sentence. The futility of his suggestion catches up with him fast, jams his mouth firmly closed.

Artie has his face angled downward, shoulders rattling like he's on a thousand different stimulants, but he is quiet. Nobody will look his way.

So it finally happened.

It feels like hours later when Will finally says, having filed the report with the local police and the city council, that rehearsal is over for the day and he'll call Tina's mother now. Goodbye, guys. For the first time he doesn't add _see you tomorrow_. The pocket of silence that replaces it is ominous, a storm approaching.

Finn feels more sick than he's ever been in his life.

 

 

*

 

 

As the earth is slowly emptied of its inhabitants, each day has a different feel to it. Initially the disappearances leave behind disorder and chaos in their wake. Which is not at all surprising; it's a goddamn _apocalypse_ , after all. But the days whirl mercilessly on by and people grow subdued, silent. Gradually this sense of resignation reigns supreme, all round the globe. Fewer people are left to generate hysteria, and each theory that is explored leads to a dead end—too discouraging. Something outside the scope of human knowledge, most likely, though there are stragglers still trying.

The news channels still provide updates but they're meaningless to Finn, endless strings of numbers. They swim and blur before his vision, they don't process. There are still people investigating, hypotheses being made, but no information filters through; nothing ends up providing actual solutions, anyway.

By the beginning of April student attendance is down thirty percent at McKinley. Santana is gone. She disappeared in the middle of Cheerios practice on an otherwise colorless Thursday. At the time they were constructing a pyramid formation, with Santana holding up in the bottom row, the very foundation. When she vanished, the entire team tumbled to the ground. The red and white outfit was all that remained of her, looking garish and too-bright in context of the situation. Brittany had a quiet funeral for Santana in her backyard; she buried Santana's cheerleading uniform in lieu of a body. Planted tulips on that makeshift grave.

Now Brittany won't come to school anymore, which surprises no one.

A few days later, Puck enters Spanish class with his eyes streaked suspiciously red. Finn doesn't ask "what's wrong?" or "are you all right?" Instead he says, "your mom or your sister?" There are only so many things that could squeeze tears out of Puck.

"Mom," Puck replies, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Voice raw, ruined, dagger-edged. "She was just, just sitting on the couch watching TV. And just like that. Gone. What a way to go." A short laugh erupts from his body, devoid of joy. "You know. When we were small, and our asshole of a dad just disappeared, she said that I would need to be a good kid, behave myself, or she'd leave too. Funny, right?"

No, Finn thinks.

Finn doesn't voice an answer. Instead he takes Puck out for lunch, Chinese food. His treat. The radio in the dingy restaurant is tuned to one of those hip college stations. _It's because people leave and no highway will bring them back_ , a bodiless voice croons, the words filling the room like the proverbial elephant. So apt.

When Puck starts sniffling over the sweet and sour pork—real tears, and man, Puck is not a pretty crier—Finn simply pats him on the back, awkwardly, and offers him some tissues, even though Puck swats his hand away ("don't need your sympathy, dude, I'm not a fuckin' _girl_ "). It's the least Finn can offer. It's all he can offer.

When they crack open their fortune cookies Puck takes one glance at the strip of paper before shredding it into his egg drop soup, face all worked up into knots. Finn doesn't ask what it said.

They part ways in silence.

On the road back home Finn notices things, despite himself. All the changes, some subtle and some not. The sidewalks nearly empty except for stray dogs, fewer cars on the streets. The atmosphere cleaner with the lack of people to pollute it. Overhead only birds—most animals are left untouched, somehow; this enigma moves in mysterious ways. Those are the obvious differences, but there is an edge to everything now: the air, sound, the way light refracts. The color of the sky a sharper blue than before. The spaces where people once were. All the symptoms of a world dying. 

 

 

*

 

 

One by one they go.

The day after Artie disappears, the remaining club members all congregate in the local playground to bury his wheelchair beneath a willow tree. Rachel's idea, surprise surprise. A melodramatic and ridiculous gesture, but it's the principle of the thing. Even Puck shows up, looking ill at ease.

(Artie had left a will; he'd written it the day Tina disappeared. The contents forever a mystery, though. Artie's mother had burned it without sparing a single glance.

"I couldn't," she began, eyes blurred bright as searchlights, "I—he'd been fettered by the limits of his own body for too long. Just let me believe he's been moved someplace where that's no longer true."

Coping mechanisms. Rachel had to explain to him what that meant, but Finn thought he sympathized.)

They dig a hole in the damp and pliant soil—doesn't take too long, with the entire group shoveling—and lower the chair gently down. Silently they stand there stone-still for some fuzzy, unremembered period of time. Rainy season, an absolute downpour, water drenching them to the bone, but that seems appropriate in the circumstances. Neon bursts of flowers blazing across the ground, rustling of tiny wildlife, salt and honeysuckle and senseless vitality perfuming the air. Everything else right here is alive but the one thing we give a shit about, Finn thinks, bitterness scouring his esophagus. Not even a body left to bury.

When they cry there are no actual tears. They've exhausted their supply. Pelting, thunderous, the weather speaks for them.

After the dirt is carefully spread out over Artie's remains—if one could call it that—Puck says boisterously and too-loud, "so, any bets on who is next in line?"

Shocked to the core, Finn whips his head around, fully expecting Rachel to chew him out, or maybe Mercedes: _what the fuck is wrong with you? And at a time like this?_

Instead Quinn is the one who answers first. Voice high-pitched and threaded with something manic, she laughs and says,

"I'll bet you ten dollars that I'll be the one to go first,"

And adds, in the face of their blank-faced stares, "only I won't be able to collect on that if I win, will I?"

Then she murmurs, much more quietly,

"It will be divine retribution,"

and somehow it's like being punched full-on in the eye, it sounds like the most absolute godawful thing Finn has ever heard in his whole life, and he doesn't even understand what it means.

Worse still, three days later—it turns out that she'd won.

 

 

*

 

 

Kurt keeps a list of the Glee Club members tacked up on his bulletin board, crosses names off when they go. He says it's therapeutic, whatever that means.

April is the cruellest month, Kurt says. A quote from somewhere, but it's never been more applicable. It is mid-May now and the list has been whittled down to this:

New Directions  
Mr. Schue  
Finn  
Kurt  
Puck  
~~Quinn~~  
Rachel  
~~Artie~~  
Mercedes  
~~Tina~~  
~~Mike~~  
~~Matt~~  
~~Brittany~~  
~~Santana~~

Only a matter of time.

 

 

*

 

 

At least he still has Rachel, thankfully, and this is the thought Finn wakes up to every day. This is the current morning routine: an initial bout of blind panic,

_Rachel, she can't have—_

—with his pulse hammering away in the hollow of his throat, and then a significant decrease in heart rate when she picks up her phone, says his name in her bright and easy way, completely contained.

Even in the face of the world ending, Rachel overflows with a steady and determined positivity. She's constantly expounding on crazy hypotheses and theories and won't let Finn get a single word in. A year ago this quality of hers would have been annoying as fuck—had been, actually—but now it's a blessing. Voice always dialed up to maximum volume, she talks and talks like she won't be able to tomorrow. (Which, incidentally, is the one possible thing she avoids mentioning at all costs. Sunshine and optimism, always. Also, angels.)

Except sometimes he doesn't want to hear about it at all, hopeful perspective or not. Today is one of those days. Yesterday it was Mercedes' turn to vanish, smack dab in his own house, his own room. At the time that it happened, Kurt had nipped into the bathroom and Finn was the only person to witness it.

What was baffling to him, truly astonishing, was his inability to become at all acclimated to this, all of this. How it actually became more difficult with each iteration. At the point that Mercedes vanished (just a flicker, gone), he'd seen more than eighteen people meet the same fate. But each time it happened it was like an onslaught of lightning, monsoons, nuclear meltdown, gravitational singularity and tectonic shift. Nothing was different about this time, except that it was worse.

As fate would have it, Kurt stepped out of the bathroom two seconds after the event. He said, "hey, Mercedes—" and skidded to a halt. The words-to-be disintegrated in his mouth as he scanned the room, parsed Finn's expression. Eyes huge, Kurt's lips moved soundlessly as though his larynx were crushed. And that look on his face—it made Finn want to burn something down, entire cities, everything.

Like that would make anything better, Finn thinks, straitjacketed by his own incompetence. These angry thoughts buzz around in his mind as he lies spread-eagled across Rachel's bed, her candyfloss-pink sheets. She is trying to convince him there is a glimmer of hope out there, and he can't possibly listen. He won't let himself be lured by false gold, false promises. It's happened too often.

"I was listening to Dr. Gablehauser on the radio," she says, pulling her fingers through her hair distractedly, "And his hypothesis is that it may be some unique strain of virus—"

"Rachel. let's not—"

"—although obviously his theory doesn't address what exactly happens to the physical body at the moment of disappearance—"

"Rachel."

He cuts her off mid-sentence with his mouth on hers, and she eases into his touch, lashes fluttering against his cheek.

(She must not have listened to the entire program, or maybe she deliberately chose to ignore the end, he isn't sure. In the car last night Finn had listened to that radio station too: the low drone of an elderly voice elaborating, extrapolating, on and on, and then it just snapped off. No screeching halt, no crescendo of a buildup, nothing dramatic. Just five minutes of stillness and then a new and harried voice, apologizing for the abrupt end of the program.

So the moments passed.

It made Finn feel seasick, though he's never been at sea.)

Unsteadily he attempts a smile. It makes his jaw ache, but he manages. "Things are all gonna be okay," he says, earnest as always.

He spends the night wrapped up in her, with her face buried in the line of his neck, his fingers curling into the curve of her waist. Feeling the tautness of muscle, the shapes of her bones beneath her skin; they are perfect and familiar. Somewhat soothed, he drifts off to sleep.

When he wakes up she's gone.

 

 

*

 

 

 

He rings Puck.

Nobody answers.

 

 

 

*

 

 

It had to happen at some point.

Finn gets off basketball practice half an hour early because Coach Tanaka says there's no point practicing when there are only four fucking players left on the team. He walks home today like he has for the past month, trying desperately to refrain from looking over his shoulder, paranoia knifing into his gut. Willing himself to think of homework and other ordinary things, he keeps his eyes on the asphalt which is obsidian and slick as glass in the early summer rain. He breathes in deeply, slightly reassured by the mechanisms of his lungs steady at work, and his heart.

At the front door he hesitates, rests his forehead briefly against the glass. Once upon a time he could walk into his home and be a hundred percent confident that someone would be there; the memory of those days is faint, it coils hazily like smoke in his consciousness. In science class he learned about this old dude named Schrödinger who had a cat inside a box, and the box had poison in it, but no one knew if the poison was released or not, and they kept the box closed. And the thing was, inside the box the cat was alive _and_ dead at the same time. So Schrödinger said.

Not that any of this made sense to Finn at the time; the profundity of it made his head swim, left him dazed. Right now, though, with his hand on the doorknob and fear rooted through his every cell, the faintest glimmer of comprehension is seeping in. He thinks he likes the box better unopened: dead and alive is a helluva lot better than just _dead_.

Can't run forever, though. He steels himself and turns the handle.

The first thing that strikes him is the scent of something simmering, clouding sweet and heavy in the air, with a hint of carbon; he goes to the kitchen, where there's soup bubbling on the stove, unattended, overflowing. That's odd. Mom always keeps an eye when she's cooking, Finn thinks, and he bites his lip.

Kurt is sitting still in a kitchen chair, red-light frozen, face angled toward the window. He doesn't move at all when Finn enters.

The rigidity of Kurt's body is what captures every fraction of Finn's attention. The lines of Kurt's shoulders, taut as a perfectly tuned bowstring; they tell him what he needs to know.

"Burt and Mom, they, when, how," Finn stammers out, sounding like an idiot as usual and hating himself for it. What a dumb thing to say, but what else? What else could he possibly—?

Kurt looks up with a face mottled and pale like rose-marble, mouth weak and twitching.

"Sorry I'm, I can't, I'm sorry about dinner, it's ruined now," he babbles, completely nonsensical, and then, "they just. They disappeared together. Just an hour ago."

Finn doesn’t say a thing. His voice fails him, throat closes up. Feels as though all his insides were scoured through by acid, his internal organs contracted tight and ready to split open. He waits for Kurt to finish crying.

It feels like an eternity.

Finally Kurt says, "They left in the usual way," as though in answer to something. He looks marginally calmer now, mouth a straight line, but his voice is still trembling. He makes a gesture toward the other end of the kitchen counter; the soup has bubbled down to the bottom of the pot, making a mess all over the stove, but never mind that. "Carole was peeling onions, dad was fishing a mug out of the cupboard, and then, you know, they just vanished. It was incredibly quiet, the way they all go." Story finished, he gets up to turn off the stove.

Finn knows it as clearly as if he'd been there. He's seen all the others. The images unravel themselves against the backdrop of his mind, undesired, and his vision blurs.

Serene, pale and otherworldly is the five o' clock light, so he tries to focus on the sky beyond the window, calm himself down, let his mind float free. Doesn't work.

"I couldn't—there was nothing I could do," Kurt says, voice small but very precise. Both eyes firmly on Finn right now, wary and careful.

"I know that, 's not your fault," and his voice is cracking, on edge, he's gripping the salt shaker so hard it really might burst into a million porcelain fragments, drown them in white ash. Danger, danger; each time it's been bad, fucking awful, but this might be the worst.

"You know that it isn't your fault either," Kurt says, and Finn has no idea why it's these words that make him see red. They break his resolve into fragments.

With both hands gripping the side of the kitchen table he flips it over in one swift motion, sending a hideous clay vase scattering into pieces, the water pooling and looking bizarrely like blood against the mahogany floorboards. Smashes a chair over the mess, splinters wood everywhere, dashes the porcelain salt shaker across the floor into smithereens.

It doesn't make him feel at all better.

"Finn, listen to me," Kurt says, loudly, with only the slightest hint of fear, "it wasn't your fault, you couldn't prevent it. Both of us, we couldn't stop this."

"I know," and he can barely recognize his own voice. For whatever reason, God only knows, he makes his way over to Kurt in two easy strides and presses him up against the wall. Hands fisted in Kurt's cashmere sweater. Kurt's eyes staring back at him are like that of a deer in the headlights and none of this is making any goddamn sense. "I couldn't do _shit_ , fucking useless," and he can't cope with this. 

The thing is that he's always felt so necessary in the fabric of his personal microcosm—football, glee club, high school social hierarchy—and like he could do anything, virtually _anything_ , or at least keep his shit together if he couldn't. At least do his part, anyway. And this whole fucked up shitty apocalypse business, it's been coming into view for a long time. Like an oncoming train, and maybe he could have pushed people toward safety. He should have been able to prevent things.

Except the truth of it is this: his existence barely registers in the grand scheme of the universe. Everything inside him is playing through this Trefoil knot of futility, rage, guilt, an infinite loop of feeling, and he wants out so much he can hardly breathe for wanting.

Sudden exhaustion sears through his body and his knees give way. He falls to the floor, dragging Kurt down with him. Fingers still curled in Kurt's clothes, running roles into the fabric no doubt, but Kurt isn't protesting.

"Screw this. If only, I, I just wish you—"

"That I had been the one to go instead?" Kurt cracks a smile. It looks more like a grimace in this light. "It's fine, you can say it."

One telling moment of horrible silence. Then, "that's, that's not what I was going to say at all," Finn stutters thickly. He's always been a terrible liar.

"It doesn't matter," Kurt says, rasping, "our time will come at some point, without fail. Our luck won't hold out much longer."

"Kurt, I," and jesus christ he feels like the hugest asshole, a complete _shit_ , "that's not what I meant, it's just—"

He blinks to clear his vision, looks into Kurt's face.

Kurt's weeping now, or maybe he's laughing, maybe both. There is something he's trying to say, disjointed syllables spilling out of him, but it's rendered unintelligible. Kurt's face is shining like a moon again and Finn goes to pieces.

He burrows his face into Kurt's shoulder, staining the fabric maroon, and pulls a hand through his hair. Kurt's hands are scrabbling frantically at his back, looking for a hold. Their bodies are close enough that Finn can feel Kurt expand and contract beneath him, anfractuous, oscillating. Both of them reduced to bundles of frayed nerves, and their world reduced to the two of them, and that.

That's just it.

All the remaining anger leaves him in a sudden rush, and he slumps forward.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs into Kurt's collarbone. He does not let go.

 

 

*

 

 

In his dream he's suffocating, he's drowning on dry land.

The atmosphere is so thick it presses deep into his skin like a fog, with emptiness surrounding him for miles and miles. Only the sky above has color, an inky blue-black, with astronomical bodies littered across the skyscape.

He feels too small, pressurized. Like he'll split open if touched.

Slowly he tries to breathe but gets lungfuls of something like dust, scattered. He knows he's looking for someone with a necessity, an urgency that burns within him like cyanide, but at the moment the name eludes him.

There's the persistent feeling that he's in the center of someone's crosshair, but he keeps turning around to find nothing.

A vague shadow appears before his vision, grows larger, then finally takes shape into someone familiar.

 _Kurt!_ , his mind supplies, exclamation point and all.

So Finn tries to run toward him but can't. Finds this an exercise in futility—he's rooted, can't move. He looks down.

From the waist down he is empty space.

He risks a glance at his hands—or at where they should be. They're gone as well.

Opening his mouth to scream, he comes up soundless.

 _What's happening to me_ flashes through his mind, except he knows all too well—

And then there's a hand wrapped around his invisible wrist, warm and real and without warning, and it jolts him into full-on consciousness and abject terror. His immediate reaction is completely instinctive: all the energy of his delirious fear goes into that punch.

(Because maybe he'd been expecting a tangible enemy after all.)

Kurt's on the floor, holding both hands to his cheek, face white and bloodless but for the crimson mark from the blow. He stares back wide-eyed, gaping. Finn is sure his own face is a mirror.

"Jesus Christ, Finn," Kurt manages.

"Fuck, shit, I'm sorry, Kurt," and he knows he's babbling but can't stop, can't stop, "I thought you were, well, you know—"

Pause.

"It's a flesh wound, it will heal," Kurt finally mutters in the silence, which was not the reaction Finn had expected at all, and Finn waits for Kurt to complain about ruining his appearance and needing to reapply make-up but it never comes.

The red mark on Kurt’s face is already deepening in color, solid and angry against the fairness of his skin: a promise that bruising will surely follow. Finn looks at his own hands, tries to steady his breathing, smooth out his mind, regain some control.

It's not as though he ever means to hurt anyone. 

 

 

*

 

 

Finn spends most of the next week in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to give way to sleep.

Mostly it boils down to an act of mourning. But there is this feeling, this sensation of displacement, dislocation, loss of self, which sounds a lot like the pseudo-psychology drivel his mom had loads of on the bookshelf; he has always defined himself by other people and his proximity to them, shaping himself around his immediate society, and now there is exactly one person left to be his anchor. Like having gravity swept out beneath his feet.

Almost unbearable, this feeling. Anxiety and dread burning thick and sour in his throat, isolated grief clouding like a fog—there are no words enough for this. On the occasions that he leaves his bed he realizes that perhaps he's a little insane. He will sometimes stand between the two mirrors in their shared bedroom and imagine a world being infinitely repopulated. He will sometimes focus very hard on the fire of the stove; these little devil urges flit through him—it would be such a simple thing to reach a hand out, leave it there and let time pass. Let the flames consume his body like the worst kind of fever. But even if he could bring himself to do it, to take that plunge—there is Kurt, always watching him.

Kurt.

Kurt dons perfectly ironed shirts and carefully arranged scarves every day like life is utterly normal, even though there's no cause to dress up for. Classes are canceled indefinitely because none of the remaining teachers are willing to leave their homes, not that they are any safer inside than outside. (Principal Figgins has set up permanent residence in his church. A tent and everything.) Kurt vacuums the house. He makes weird-tasting dinners, and rearranges his wardrobe by color and type and designer, and paints their room a subdued forest green, keeping a wary eye on Finn all the while. As though reveling in simple and quiet domesticity.

Occasionally Kurt tries to talk to him, but Finn always grunts a one-word response and turns over in bed; he's not ready to face the new colorless world just yet. Maybe he will never be ready, maybe he'll be gone too in the next two minutes, and the thought is like a secondhand car crash and he can't turn away. Replays it over and over in his mind. Waiting.

Five days after Burt and Carole disappear, Kurt places an arm on Finn's shoulder. Finn nearly throws an fist out in the shock of being touched, but remembers himself just in time.

"Finn," muted and just the slightest bit shaky, "you need to stop—stop doing this."

In the stretch of silence following, Finn doesn't turn around. Resolute, he stares out the window. All quiet in the neighborhood.

"Finn," Kurt says, louder, "you're being pathetic."

Which makes Finn wince a little.

"You need to stop," Kurt continues, relentlessly onward, "living life like you constantly have one foot out the door." Swallowing thickly, he says, "I—I'm not saying I believe that we're immune to whatever this phenomenon is. Most likely we'll be taken eventually. But everyone's mortal, we'd have to die anyway even if whatever this is doesn't get to us first.

"Just, honestly, Finn. Don't make this harder for me than it is."

It's a plea. And then—

It all comes to him in a heady rush. Facts: this is his stepbrother, and his glee club companion (well, past tense), who wears Alexander Wang sweaters every day for an invisible audience and prefers his eggs scrambled and spends exactly fifty-five minutes in the bathroom every morning (yes, still) and always puts books back in their original places and can quote every line from _the Sound of Music_.

This is his last remaining constant, the one person who can keep him tethered to his past life, grounded to this axis. This is the only one he has left that counts.

So he shouldn't—won't—fuck shit up, he tells himself. He will pretend that life can go on the same. He will do it because that is what Kurt wants and because spending the last weeks of one's life lying in bed actually _is_ kinda pathetic and because he can't spend his remaining time on earth just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Not that he articulates anything; he isn't the type. Finn lies silent and stone-still until the sound of Kurt's footsteps fades away. But that evening Finn is the one to make dinner.

They will try to take things one day at a time.

 

 

*

 

 

The night that he wakes up to find Kurt's bed empty—he's not sure he has ever known real terror before then. It's a sight that makes his entire body go still.

These wild crazy images populate every corner in his mind's eye, impossible things, only nothing is impossible now, is it? His heart's pounding so hard he can nearly taste it in his mouth and he thinks his eardrums might burst. It takes him less than a second to pull himself out of bed.

He's halfway up the stairs when there's the creak of the door opening. In walks Kurt, humming some glee club song or other in an airy fashion, hands full of items wrapped in plastic. Looks up. "Finn?" he says, brow furrowing, "what are you doing awake?" and two seconds later, "um, Finn, _really_ what are you doing—?"

Confirming the existence of a pulse shivering underneath his fingers; that's it, he thinks, that's it. Finally satisfied, he draws his hand away from Kurt's neck.

"Fuck, you scared me," he says, struck through with crystalline sharp relief. "Don't just, like, run off somewhere without telling me, I was freaking out like crazy—"

"We were out of food, you do realize. Did you think we should resort to eating the furniture?" Kurt chides, voice laced with condescension, but there's a real smile in potentia, tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Now, help me put these in the cupboard and the fridge, if you wouldn't mind."

That night is spent scrabbling at the borders of restfulness, despite his best efforts. For the first time in a while he feels completely bright, alert, all synapses firing. The entire night he keeps tossing and turning and looking over at the other side of the room. There is Kurt Hummel, unconscious but breathing and tangible and miraculously alive; Finn can't seem to stop closing his eyes and reopening them, looking over and over and over again. A small jolt of surprise shifting in his bones every time he sees that Kurt is still undeniably there.

(He commits this image to memory. It's an image he can hold on to, for that point in the future when he'll wake up to find Kurt gone again. And when that time comes, it will be permanent; of this he is certain.)

 

 

*

 

 

The days pass, and it's summer again.

It’s real bright out today, with all the heat pelting down on them; the sunlight casts elongated shadows on the asphalt. The warmth of sun bleeds its way underneath Finn’s skin and stays there.

They don't leave the house that often, only to stock up on essentials and sometimes when Finn's tired of hearing Kurt's _Best of Sondheim_ CD played over and over again, and certainly never alone. Sometimes it's calming, seeing all the open space unfolded before them, and the occasional person making her way across the sidewalk, but more often it isn't.

An empty morning. Quiet roads stretch out in all directions and Finn's ears fill up with echoes, the low humming of cars, but no—the streets are barren. Just the wind and his brain fucking around with him, slotting noise into places where it ought to be. He shivers, just a little.

On the way to the grocery store they pass by house after empty house. Most of the front yards are untended, with blackly withered flowers limp in their plots, and wild plants that are taller than even himself. He tells Kurt how strange that makes him feel, who smirks and loops an arm into his.

(A strange thing it feels for Finn, being touched. Almost alien, really, even though he goes out of his way to touch and to be touched. The satisfaction of affirming Kurt's existence every day, warm flesh and material in the curve of his palm, is more heady than the greatest adrenaline rush. And he's addicted, completely. He's in it now.)

They nearly pass Mr. Schue's house in all its lemon yellow glory before Finn comes to a halt and whirls around. Mr. Schue's been gone for a while now; his disappearance was what caused Mr. Figgins to abandon his home and seek spiritual refuge. Nevertheless Finn feels compelled to validate this, a what-if in his bones.

The door is ajar but they knock five times anyway; old habits die hard. Through the open window there's the tinny sound of a television blaring and the water flowing from the tap in the kitchen sink, but nothing human.

Finn knows exactly what to expect inside, but still he announces, "'m going in to see."

"That's probably a bad idea." Voice low, a warning. He's right, of course, but Finn is past giving a damn.

Instead of responding he pushes the door resolutely forward. With a sigh, Kurt follows him in.

Almost exactly what Finn imagined: TV powered on with garishly-colored cartoon characters trotting across the screen, an old shriveled carrot half-diced on the chopping board, water spilling over the kitchen counter and pooling on the white tiled floor.

This life wasn't supposed to end so quietly.

The picture is all wrong. Wrong and unsettling, like those optical illusions that look so regular at first glance. When people go their homes should go quiet in sync, not leave all their mundane facts of life abandoned, still running on full power. That isn't the way of things, he thinks, and only when Kurt tugs gently at his sweater does Finn realize that he'd nearly stopped breathing entirely.

"Come on," Kurt says, swallowing. "We can—we can clean the place up."

And that is what they do. They put all the dishes back in the cupboards and turn off all the lights and the television and throw out the partially chopped vegetables and clean out the fridge and close that one open window, and it is not unlike sliding the eyelids of a corpse shut.

They leave the house without casting a single glance behind them, but as the supermarket looms into view their bodies draw closer. Their hands touch.

The grocery store isn't empty, not yet. A handful of people are milling around the aisles glassy-eyed, speaking to each other in voices that Finn has to strain to hear (nothing of consequence). The shelves are half depleted and there hasn't been fresh produce for weeks; a storm of mosquitoes cloud over the fruit and vegetable section. Finn and Kurt gather cans of Coke, packages of instant ramen, boxes of Poptarts into their arms. Weeks ago Kurt would rant in paragraphs about the empty calories, the hydrogenated fats, the sodium levels, but now he lacks any other options. Anything that doesn't come tinned or boxed has already passed its expiration date. The atmosphere is toxic and thick with the stench of rotten produce, rotting flesh.

As they're checking out, the cashier disappears.

"Number eight." When Finn directs a quizzical look at him Kurt adds, "I've been making lists, you see. Eight cashiers I've seen vanish in supermarkets. Forty-two people I've witnessed disappearing firsthand. Two people gone today, although I'm sure that figure will go up tomorrow.

"Coping is easier if I quantify everything. Convert events into figures. You could try it sometime, Finn. Make a couple lists."

And Kurt smiles at him with his mouth only, in that way that Finn really doesn't like. 

But later that day he takes his brother's advice. A list: not of numbers, but of Things He Wants. The list is a very simple one:

\- a steak. (What? He's an eighteen-year-old boy.)  
\- playing football. (The adrenaline rush, the tangled geometry of arms and legs and the trajectory of that perfect throw—he'd have forgotten what all of it was like if not for muscle memory.)  
\- to touch someone and not be gentle.  
\-                

He doesn't want to jinx anything.

 

 

*

 

 

Tonight Kurt is out, picking up food and household essentials. (Only it's more like raiding the store—no one is keeping the shops maintained, and there are no more cashiers at the checkout counters. Kurt says he still can't shake off the guilt of shoplifting, though. These are the strange things that they hold on to.)

Finn spends the evening with his face pressed to the window, leaving smudges on the glass. With his mind skittish, in frantic disarray, all his thoughts fuzzed at the edges.

He can't even remember the last time they'd been separated, and it's not merely a question of distance. For him Kurt is either within or beyond his line of sight; the thickness of a wall between them might as well be the distance between stars. The actual measure of space between them is of no consequence. A black and white situation and Finn is dimly aware that it's not exactly healthy, this perpetual codependency, but there isn't anyone else to tell him that.

When he sees Kurt appear on the sidewalk it's as though the atmosphere—previously thinned by flames—fills with oxygen again, and he remembers how good it feels to breathe.

Kurt smirks easily at him as he passes through the door and unceremoniously dumps more heavy plastic bags into Finn's arms. "You'll need to stop having a fit every time I leave the house," he remarks, "or you'll keel over from a nervous breakdown."

"Sorry for _caring_ ," Finn mutters, but the lines of his shoulders curve slightly.

"There's a meteor shower scheduled to happen soon," Kurt says. Finn doesn't ask how he knows. "To the roof?"

Beautiful evening, it really is, with whole messes of stars redshifting, receding into unfathomable distances. It's the fourth night they've spent on the roof by now, with a blanket over their feet and their hands linked fast. On a previous night Kurt told him that when they gazed at stars they were looking at history, due to finite light-speed what they saw was only the light that astronomical bodies left behind, and people were all made of stardust. And somewhere in the science there was a metaphor waiting to be unraveled, some kinda poetry, but Finn did not know how.

And then the meteoroids come.

The sky is ablaze with them, tearing white-hot scars across the vast black expanse, all death-defying beauty as they burn up in the atmosphere. The sight leaves Finn transfixed, frozen still.

"Wish on a shooting star," Kurt murmurs. "Will you wish for something?"

Finn thinks about his list, the Things He Wants. It's a stupid list.

"They're just rocks," is what he says, because that's true as well. And he knows that Kurt knows it, but he doesn't feel like playing along, not tonight. "Did you?"

"Some things," says Kurt, eyes half-lidded. "Lots of selfish things. Can't tell you though obviously, because they won't come true then, will they?"

Kurt's clearly just joking around, being whimsical, so it's ridiculous that the words should flay Finn's heart open, bring him to the verge of an emotional precipice.

"Yeah," he says, voice steady as he knows how. He throws an arm over his eyes, faking exhaustion with a drawn-out sigh. _I will not cry_. The mantra runs through his mind, a song on loop. _I will not cry_.

 

 

*

 

 

Every night his dream is the same: a dream of falling.

"You talk in your sleep, you know," Kurt says.

"Oh yeah? What'd I say?"

For a moment Kurt looks at him, quiet. The stillness draws out. Then he says, "I can't remember."

 

 

*

 

 

There comes the day that the power goes out.

Around noon Finn makes his way up the stairs to find Kurt frantically pressing the buttons of the remote control, face blanched. He glances over at the television, which displays only their reflection in spite of Kurt's best efforts. Still, he hardly thinks the situation calls for the way Kurt is reacting, which is bordering on a full-on conniption.

"Dude. You okay?"

"The TV," Kurt replies, thin-lipped, "the TV won't turn on. We're out of electricity, power."

"Um. Okay. And that means ... ?"

"It means that there's no longer anyone feeding the power stations, nothing to keep them running," Kurt says. "I mean, I found it suspicious how I hadn't seen _anyone_ on the streets recently, and—and I noticed three days ago that we were no longer getting updates on the bodycount, or for that matter, any news. Just reruns. But I thought maybe—but I was wrong. I don't know, Finn, do you see what this means? We won't have electricity, or running water. Gas too, eventually. All these things we've been accustomed to."

Kurt looks like he might come apart right then and there, with his breathing ragged and words coming out incomplete and fingers running over the buttons of the remote over and over with no result. The television remains stubbornly unresponsive. As do the stove and fridge, and all the lights in the house, and the electrical outlets. The test drives with their laptops prove negative, too.

Time to play the responsible brother figure, or something.

"Dude, chill," Finn says with a levity he doesn't feel. Gingerly he places a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "I mean, like, we've had power outages before, right? Maybe it's just one of those. Maybe it's just our house. Maybe 's just for a couple days or something."

Kurt doesn't look mollified, but his breathing becomes regular again. "We can find out."

They spend the rest of the night waiting for the electricity to come back on, but it never happens. Not that they'd really expected it.

 

The next day they stall until it's nearly sundown before leaving their house. Kurt hasn't touched his precious baby for a long time, since everything they've needed is within walking distance anyway, but he's kept it clean, polished, gleaming. Paint looking fresh as anything. Keeping up appearances and all.

Due to lack of use it takes a while to get the car started and moving, but then they're making their way through the little roads of suburbia. Not a single person or vehicle on the streets, no lights radiating from any houses or shops, no television shows generating white noise in the background. The neon tubes of cheap restaurant signs now a dull slate color. No flicker of movement in any of the windows. Nothing but a dense quiet occasionally broken by crickets chirping, and the traffic lights are dead.

"Probably just our town," Finn manages, but it's becoming difficult, this forced suspension of belief, and his words come out fumbled. To give his hands something to do he pushes a CD at random into the player. Sound pours out of the car speakers, kinda jarring really, but it's preferable to tense silence.

At the moment the sky is just bright enough to make out the shapes of traffic cones, stop signs, billboards through the window glass, looming and eerie in the dark; the road becomes wider when they hit the freeway, and they're tearing through the outskirts of this town and into another. The path is lined with streetlights unlit, tall and stark like rows of trees, and Finn tries to count them but they're rushing by far too fast.

Complete darkness stretches out as far as the eye can see. And as far as Finn can see, no other headlights; not a single other car coming toward them.

Nothing at all.

"Well," Kurt says in the darkness, breathing slow and controlled and steady, "I think we can safely draw some conclusions. Based on not having seen a single other soul in the past two weeks, and the loss of a power supply, which appears to be at least statewide ... "

And then Kurt is talking again, loudly over the music. Forty minutes of driving and driving and he's calm now with his hands steady at the wheel, rationalizing everything and charting their futures, spewing out entire essays. He talks about electric lamps and candles and battery powered things. About growing their own food, cultivating a proper garden, and relocating if and when the supermarkets in Lima ran out of stock. About the death of basic utilities and the shelf life of everything—because nothing lasted, did it? "We really didn't plan ahead, did we," Kurt says, "since we won't be able to get any gas at all after this tank is used up. All the gas stations are out of use."

Silent and still, Finn watches the world dim to black outside, with the lack of artificial light to distinguish anything from the troposphere. He hadn't expected to plan ahead at all, it's never his nature to—he's always thought a maximum of two steps ahead. We're eighteen, we're really still kids—these frustrated thoughts pass through his mind. We're not supposed to have to worry about this shit, how to survive in a wasteland.

Besides, he hadn't expected either of them to be around long enough for the issue to come up. Despite Kurt's request, he hasn't been able to shake off this feeling of unease; he carries it around like a birthmark. Always at the ready, waiting for his turn to go.

But Kurt is still talking.

"No one left to ensure that everything is still running, or could," Kurt says, "or perhaps there are stragglers, but they're far enough away that it might as well be just the two of us. Probably on the other side of the planet."

"But," and Finn turns around and looks at Kurt for the first time since they'd hit the road, "we've already made it this far."

And, clearing his throat a little, he adds, "besides, it's been just the two of us for a while now.

"We're, we'll be okay. 's all gonna be okay."

Kurt looks startled, and maybe a flicker of something else, at that.

Finn smirks just a tiny bit, that little fishhook grin of his. "Not gonna lie, though, I'm really gonna miss using my xBox, man. And I'll never find out what happens to Cartman in the next South Park episode."

That makes Kurt laugh, clear and unstifled. He reaches over and turns off the CD player. "I'm simply mourning the fact that I'll never be able to see Project Runway on my television screen again," Kurt says, and they smile at each other. Awkwardly, but it feels better than before by a long shot.

"Tomorrow we ought to raid every store we possibly can," Kurt says, reverting back to matter-of-fact. Boiling their existence down to plans and to-do lists, as usual; it makes processing the situation easier, somehow. "Stock up on seeds that we can plant, and food, of course; I never thought I'd say this, but thank god for canned food and preservatives. And batteries. Batteries have a shelf life, but—I'm sure we will find an alternative solution before that becomes a problem."

Or maybe it never will be. The implication remains unacknowledged but ever-present, and somehow—that's fine. Just fine.

So they drive home in silence, but this brand of quiet is easier to bear than the one they started out with; it's the kind they can stretch out in. Not calm, exactly, but an acceptance of things; that their life as it is could be bearable. They need only select a different frame of reference. Change their definition of normal.

Before they enter the house Finn casts the sky a desultory glance. Stars are out, burning in a way he's never seen before, now with the absence of all other light.

"Stars are brighter now," he says to Kurt as he shoves a key in the door handle, "that's a good thing, yeah?"

There is a beat of silence, and then,

"Yes," Kurt replies, and he is looking at Finn in a way that's like a promise and a request and a dare all at once, and Finn doesn't really know how to dissect that but he feels his heart stutter slightly and his muscles stiffen, graceless. The look completely floors him, and he could not say why.

 

 

*

 

 

The world has been ending for a while now.

Life without electricity, gas and running water is just as jarring as one would expect, but they make do by wanting for less. They manage to raid a fair number of stores before the gas in Kurt's car finally hits zero, thank god. Stale Poptarts and year-old cornflakes for breakfast, and they grow some produce in the back garden. (Kurt usually makes Finn do the gardening; he doesn't like to get grit-and-dirt mess on his clothes still.) They make preserves and jams for winter and steal fruit from the trees in the backyard of abandoned homes. Battery-powered flashlights hang from all the ceilings. They get used to taking baths using bottled mineral water, although that one hits the hardest—some days Finn could give his right arm for a hot shower, and Kurt complains daily about his bathroom regimen. But they adapt, in the end, because they must.

When he's not doing daily errands Finn stays uncurled on the soda, limbs loose. No more electricity means that he spends a lot of time with books spread open across his lap, windows open, weakly pale October light filtering in and the barest hint of frost. Sometimes it takes him an hour to finish reading a page, and then he forgets the stories immediately after; rarely do the chapters process with him after reading. Not that the actual meaning of anything matters: it's about building whole fortresses out of words. Block the world out.

More often than not, Kurt reads to him instead. Kurt reads a lot of old books and poetry that Finn's never heard of (although maybe he would have if he'd ever stayed awake in English class back then). Finn always keeps his eyes closed when he listens to the rise and fall of Kurt's voice, undulating like waves, all aquatic grace: "Had we but world enough, and time ... "

"—Finn, are you listening?"

Finn opens his eyes, and Kurt huffs a little, eyes narrowed with annoyance.

"I'm not sure why I bother, when clearly you're never paying any attention."

I am paying attention, really I am, Finn tries to say, but the words become locked up in his throat. And it's true, he's one-hundred percent focused, but maybe five percent of that is directed at the actual story. Mostly it's just Kurt. One day Finn started looking at Kurt and then he never stopped. Every corner of his mind filling up with his stepbrother: Kurt's speaking voice versus his singing voice, the way the planes and angles of Kurt's face shift when he's bittersweet-happy or resigned, the gentle touch he always applies to old hardcovers on the shelf, the fact that he always returns books to their original places. All in hyperreal detail.

And there is something very dysfunctional about Finn's feelings, something frightening and maybe terrible; he's aware of this. It seizes him in little flashes, the desire to make all distance between the two of them disappear, to reach underneath layers of fabric and feel Kurt's heart contracting so close to his touch. To press his fingers against Kurt's skin and memorize the surface-shape of each rib. This is all very wrong and he is suppressing it as best he can because—well. There are plenty of reasons. The gay thing, for one. Maybe subverting social conventions is no longer an issue, but there's this faint fear-nausea that still lingers like a phantom limb.

But still there is more to it.

Kurt is the one focus of Finn's life. He is the last thing on earth that keeps him afloat. To want for anything more from him—it would be wanting for too much.

 

 

*

 

 

It's December when they finally refer to their parents in the past tense. The winter dawns on Finn suddenly; he wakes up in the morning and outside the window, the snow is piling up, cruel and relentless. It surprises him, how the new season crept up on him like that; they left timekeeping behind with the dead television set.

The cold is as biting as that of any previous winter, the frost turning his limbs into fiberglass, and if he and Kurt fall asleep in the same bed some nights, well—there's no synthetic source of heat anymore. Nothing more to it.

One night Kurt suggests alcohol to stave off the cold, which sounds like a pretty good idea. And because they're teenagers, they take it to excess. The lack of any other people only fuels their extravagance.

So they get drunk. The kind of pure, mindless intoxication that might hypothetically happen at some Friday night college party when their worries consist of mundane things like next month's midterm and how to get those wine stains out of the carpet. It's nice alcohol, too, their parents' white wine, but Burt and Carole aren't there to stop them. Finn's so smashed he can't feel his own face and it's like coordination is some novel concept. The candle flames are dissolving into the wallpaper and he thinks Kurt is saying something, but the sound just filters in as a low and persistent buzz of static.

"Finn Hudson. Considering your size, I'd have expected you to have a far higher tolerance."

Finn looks up from where he's lying on the floor. And up, and up.

Through the blurred haze he drinks in the sight of his sort-of-brother. Kurt is smiling, that he can tell. It makes him think of the alcohol he'd just poured down his throat, a slow-but-sure burn. And right now Kurt's eyes look like stars blueshifted, drawing ever closer, or the light that has departed from all the streetlamps, or just the only beautiful thing left in all the world and he wants so very badly, with the alcohol pulling apart his previous reservations. And with one hand he grips Kurt by the arm and drags him tumbling down, their limbs knocking together.

"Uh," Kurt says, giving him a look that is probably meant to be scathing, or uncomfortable perhaps, but instead it makes all his blood run hot through his veins.

"Hi," he returns, stupid little grin hanging on his mouth, looking straight into Kurt's eyes. And Kurt's just looking at him with his mouth in a straight line, and sure he's totally smashed, but this silence is loud and ten different kinds of awkward. So maybe this would be a good time to look away, or this one, or this—

—but it's Kurt who laces their fingers together, who first crosses that bridge between impulse and action. Who bends into him and Kurt's mouth is so warm, wet, all liquid heat from the alcohol. His hands palmed across Finn's chest. And Finn kisses back like a drowning man, except this is more important than breathing, right now. He bites Kurt's bottom lip gently first, then with dawning pressure, drawing this perfect little hitched sound out of him, so Finn does it again and again, reveling in this. All of this.

Eyelashes and clean skin brushing close against his neck as Kurt then moves his mouth across Finn's collarbone. He is dragging his fingers through Kurt's hair and he could stop, should stop, but any control he's had has given way to simple single-minded desire. And Kurt's kissing him again, soft hair falling forward into Finn's eyes and every cell in his body is saying yes yes yes and he will not fight it.

The sound of his heartbeat right now is loud as thunder in the silence, and Finn maybe tears Kurt's shirt open and lets his hands chart all of this flesh-and-blood territory. Listening to Kurt say his name sets all his nerves ablaze, and he hooks a finger in the belt loop of Kurt's perfectly tailored trousers and pulls down. Then there's Kurt arching forward into him, reduced nearly to incoherency, broken pleading peppered with blatant lies like _I love you_ and _I always have_ and _it's the forever kind_ and other alcohol-induced hyperboles.

That's what Finn would like to believe, anyway. He doesn't speak, but he does kiss Kurt hard enough to draw blood.

 

Before sleep comes to him that night, he realizes he’s almost happy. It comes as something of a surprise.

 

 

*

 

 

The problem with drunken revelry is that it's always followed by the morning after. Finn wakes up to this particular morning-after on the carpet floor, with a mouth dry as cotton and anxiety pooling in his gut.

Four inches away, Kurt stirs a little, then forces his eyelids open.

And Kurt says,

"Good morning,"

smiling a little bland smile as though everything were perfectly peachy, as though all the events of last night were some fever-induced hallucination, and after a few moments of uneasy quiet Finn croaks out "hey", because two can play at this game, can't they.

 

Except that night Kurt maybe corners him against the wall, eyes all fierce like and an iron grip on his arm, and maybe Finn digs his fingers hard into Kurt's hips as they kiss, leaving little little marks that will refuse to fade. And maybe Kurt says the same things he did the night before, and Finn remains unable to answer.

At any rate, neither of them talk about it.

 

 

*

 

 

As the atmosphere grows completely still they begin to speak at a lower volume, as though someone else might hear them, and less. 

But they touch more, now. He has never wanted to touch anyone this much in his memory. Every day, mouth pressed into the small of his collarbone. Tongue against tongue. Hands memorizing the calluses and the faintest of the scars and lifelines. This is his life, now: telescoped down, and down, into days of canned fruit sticky with syrup, leafing through novels by candle light, his stepbrother unfurled beneath his hands.

Their lack of sexual experience is far more telling when they aren't drunk. A total mess, really; they kiss too hard and grip each other with force enough to create bruises and all their movements are overly exaggerated but that's the way Finn likes it, lacking in grace certainly but definitely not lacking in intent. And it's almost reassuring to look in the mirror later and see the scratches, and feel the ache of those purpling bruises which prove that yes, Kurt is real. Finn hasn't quite gone mad yet. They touch each other like they're the last two people on Earth, and to Finn this is the truth.

There are days, though, when he wonders about these possible other survivors, perhaps a few people clinging to each other in Ukraine or in Thailand, and it's a sobering thought. He can no longer remember what it's like _not_ to live like this day would be the last, would be everything, like each motion he's passing through might end in another moment. Only three-quarters of a year ago he was in love with a girl who had long brown hair and a perfect showface; he remembers it as a story, or something that happened to someone else.

He always remains silent when Kurt says those things, in the throes of sex. It's not a desire born out of love but of something he has no words for; necessity is the closest thing. Kurt might be that one focal point, might draw Finn irresistibly to him, moth-to-flame like. But a planet needs a sun to orbit round, and therein lies a principle of what someone might call love: a natural consequence born from the lack of other options.

(It would also not be true to label it lust, or passion; he'd never be able to articulate it neatly. What strikes him first and foremost, and every time he cards his fingers through Kurt’s hair or presses their dry mouths together, is this overwhelming sense of relief. The feeling that immediately follows the rediscovery of a lost key, a lost thing: the reassurance that everything is in exactly the right place.)

 

 

*

 

 

Saturation point comes on a Saturday.

The snow is receding, the weather heading toward spring. A year since the world was first thrown into chaos, before everything petered out into silence. Only when Kurt mentions the date, off-hand and casual, does Finn realize it. The calendar they have hanging above the broken bedroom lamp still says it's September.

It's afternoon, judging from the position of sunlight on the wall. They’re in bed drifting in and out of consciousness when Kurt says, out of the blue, "For my bruise to heal. For you to fall in love with me. For everyone else to come back from wherever they've gone. For the two of us not to disappear."

Finn opens his eyes but continues staring at the ceiling, half-frozen.

He knows what this is. He is not ready for this.

Slowly he says, "I thought you said that they wouldn’t come true if you told me. That it would jinx all your wishes if you told me any of them."

"That's right." He curls his fingers around Finn’s wrist, warm and sure. "But the bruise is healing now, isn't it? And then there's the second point ..."

and his voice trails off.

Something akin to terror grips Finn, hard. Heart all clogged up in his throat.

It would be such an easy thing for him to just say it. To echo the sentiments that Kurt has thrown at him every night, the same way he responds to all of Kurt's touches in kind. But there it is, right there, the million-dollar question: if it had been someone else, anyone else on this earth. Yes or no?

The answer, he thinks wretchedly, is obvious.

What to say; focus, _focus_. Kurt's still looking at him, he can feel the weight of an expectant gaze. He could lie, of course. But Kurt is smart: he can read the degree, the meaning in expressions. Lying would be an exercise in futility, but to do otherwise would be—well, dangerous.

Stalling for time, Finn draws his knuckles across the curve of Kurt’s cheekbone. The bruise has mostly healed, but he can still make out the discoloration, ragged around the edges. A country on a map he doesn't know how to read. He was never able to unearth that key.

What rips out of his mouth is

"I'm sorry,"

and in that moment he risks everything.

 

 

The silence that follows lasts for a ghastly long while, but when Finn risks a glance sideways, Kurt is not crying and his face is desert-dry. The expression is not quite anything in particular. "I'm sorry too," Kurt says.

And Finn has nothing to say to that. 

 

 

*

 

 

The next morning he knows without opening his eyes, perhaps even before he gains full consciousness, that he's alone. He can hear it in the silence that Kurt has left behind.

And that is okay. That's just fine. He can pretend he's dreaming, still. All he has to do is keep his eyes closed.

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

end

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this a whopping 7 years ago, wow. i still quite like the plot, so ... archiving this.  
> thanks to themillersson & ipleadthe5th for beta work.


End file.
